


In The Grand Scheme, I'm Not Much

by SugaryShoyu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Croatoan/Endverse, Dean's self-loathing, Drug Use, Episode: s05e04 The End, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:53:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29908299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugaryShoyu/pseuds/SugaryShoyu
Summary: "You look like you care what happens."It's nostalgia, Dean realizes with a strange horror. Cas is looking at him with the same wistful longing he feels seeing pictures of his mother.In 2014, Dean spends the night with Castiel before they leave Camp Chitaqua to confront Lucifer, and he learns more than he'd like. They might be too alike, seeking comfort everywhere they shouldn't.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 8





	1. He Can't Carve a Whistle

In two days at Camp Chitaqua, Dean learns that the world is ending, Sam is Lucifer's meatsuit, and he's a heartless bastard of a man. Even with all that, and a Croatoan hot zone and Lucifer looming ahead of sunrise, Cas' faintly inebriated suggestion that he and Dean have shared a bed for more than sleeping is still enough to leave Dean spluttering.

"Wait, so you and me, we're—" He gestures between them and clears his throat, not quite ready to ask that question.

"Well, I wouldn't call us a thing, but—" Cas gives a loose shrug, a hard-edged smile. Like everything else in the last two days, it makes Dean's head spin. Cas doesn't seem to notice, too busy packing loaded magazines into his duffle bag. He counts some invisible checklist on his fingers one last time before zipping it shut and dropping it on the floor.

"But I- I'm not—" He would like to be able to finish at least one sentence in this conversation, but he also desperately does not want to voice the rest of his thought. Of course Cas finishes it for him, because now Cas is human enough to understand and stoned enough not to care. He's got that forceful grin, apparently tickled by Dean's frantic defense of his masculinity.

"It's 2014, Dean. No one cares about your sexuality— mainly because anyone who would is dead or busy fighting for their lives, but the point stands." With that, he wanders to sit on the dingy bed across the room and takes a swig from the nearest bottle before holding it out in invitation. Dean's stomach is rolling a little at the vacant look settled on him, but he accepts the bottle and sinks down beside Cas anyway. The bitter burn of cheap absinthe rolling down his throat is about what he expects, but beggars can't be choosers, so Dean grimaces and swallows another mouthful. Beside him, Cas makes an amused sound around the joint between his lips and flicks open a lighter. It takes a few more drinks for Dean to dredge up the nerve to finally watch him take a long drag and slowly let the smoke trickle back into the room. Cas' eyes are on him the whole time, might have been since Dean gave in and sat down, something twinkling in the spreading blackness of his pupils. He must have taken something else when Dean wasn't looking, because they weren't that wide during the meeting. "Haven't seen you make that face in years."

"What face?" He tries to sound irritated, but his throat is dry and the words come out a croak. Cas doesn't dignify the attempt with an answer, just lets a cheshire grin split his face as his head tips back. There's a challenge in the bare line of his throat— Dean knows it, and hates how it makes him feel like a kid, uncertain and at the mercy of someone else's whims. Dean wants to ask _what's wrong with you_ , but he knows the answer. He saw himself with flint in his eyes and death on his hands, saw someone who's supposed to be him kill a friend without hesitation or remorse. _No point in troubling a good man with bad news_ , he had said, and Dean hated him in that moment. He hates him now. Cas had been good and sure for longer than the Earth had been spinning, but Dean swept in with his arrogance and his selfishness and broke that down in just seven years.

Cas must see him bristling and mistake it for offense, because he laughs rudely and finally says "Take another drink and I'll tell you."

Dean rolls his eyes but obeys. The bottle is barely away from his lips before Cas curls his fingers over Dean's, guiding the bottle to his own mouth. His throat bobs, and Dean shivers at the familiar softness finally rolling down his limbs, liquid warmth in his veins. Cas lets go with a sigh, and then his eyes are level with Dean's, nothing but a ring of blue around solid black. Dean is about to flinch back until the hand around his slides up to his cheek. Cas still looks unsettlingly dazed, but something familiar is filling the hollowness that peers out when he smiles.

"You look like you care what happens."

It's nostalgia, Dean realizes with a strange horror. Cas is looking at him with the same wistful longing he feels seeing pictures of his mother. He has a sudden, crushing urge to run, the sensation of something rattling apart behind his ribcage, trying to shake him out of his own body. The bottle knocks to the floor and spills, but Dean can't feel bad about it, too busy wondering how to break out of this ridiculous funhouse he's trapped in. He doesn't realize he's pacing until Cas' hand on his chest stops him in his tracks. Dean wants to laugh when Cas offers him the joint with a raised brow, but he's pretty sure it would come out too hysterical to brush off after. He shakes his head and takes an unsteady breath; that must be the answer Cas wants, because his lips twitch in a ghost of a smile and he quickly retracts the offer. His hand curls around to Dean's side, running light and soothing over his ribs. Dean finds himself leaning into it, lets himself tilt towards Cas when his hand moves up to Dean's cheek. Cas keeps drifting closer, eyes not moving from Dean's even when he briefly presses their mouths together. It's not quite the same— this Cas' eyes are too unfocused and glazed over— but there's an approximation of the intensity Dean is used to in his stare. When Cas pulls back he chases before he can really remember why he shouldn't, and Cas grins, exhales hotly against his lips. Then Cas is surging forward and Dean catches him, still reeling. He can't even taste Cas under the gritty bitterness of booze and pills, just feels the warm slide of lips and tongue when he opens his mouth.  
They break apart, and one of them— Dean wants to think it's Cas, but he wouldn't make any bets— makes a wounded sound that has Dean pressing back in to kiss the loss away.

He could admit, in his drunkest moments, to imagining kissing Cas. He's thought about it in a vindictive sort of way— riling Cas up, wiping the angelic scowl off his face. The fantasy usually ends with Cas amusingly stunned to silence or, if Dean is feeling a special amount of self-loathing, disgusted to learn Dean could see him that way.

He can't blame his imagination for not expecting anything like this. It's all heat and last-night-on-Earth desperation, no room for affection. If there is any tenderness to be found, it's the kind that makes a bruise hurt. Dean doesn't know where to put his hands, but Cas has no such hesitation; his fingers are squeezing Dean's arms, dragging up his spine and tugging at his hair, shivers chasing in their wake. When he pulls back, it's with a manic rush, a glint that urges Dean to get with the program. Against his better judgment, Dean complies, tugs Cas' shirt over his head and dives back in for another kiss that devolves into nips along his jawline and hands sliding across his chest.

Of the two of them, he never would have expected Cas to be the impatient one. Yet when they push and pull each other back to the bed, barely pulling apart to strip clothes away, Dean is the one to hush Cas' grunted complaints, to slow down the press of hands and lips in some hopeful attempt to make something of nothing. He almost regrets the effort when Cas matches his pace, because having those eyes focused on him really is like pressing on a bruise. Some nagging, ugly part of him is morbidly satisfied, but at what cost? Then Cas' fingertips are tracing Dean's face like he could memorize it, and he's smiling with a warmth Dean's never seen on him, and it's the first thing in the future that doesn't feel like a sick parody. Dean catches his hand, presses a kiss to the palm. Even with his insides dug out and raw, the sour taste of his own sins catching in his throat, any cost is worth it.

He's flushed, sticky, and still a little buzzed when he falls asleep later with Cas' arm across his waist, and he only gets a few hours of blissful oblivion before he wakes on pure habit. Cas is gone, but his duffel is waiting by the door, so he can't be gone for good. Dean stretches, gets a nice loud pop from his neck before he slides out of bed and pulls his clothes on. There's no tacky mess on his skin, to his surprise; he wouldn't know about his Cas, but this one doesn't seem like the aftercare type. He takes a second to groan and scold himself, useless as it is at this point. The deed's already been done, and there's a lot to unpack, but Dean is nothing if not consistent so he actively decides to bury the whole suitcase and never look at it again. In another day he'll be home, and Camp Chitaqua will be nothing but a three-day fever dream; even as he tells himself, Dean's skin crawls with the knowledge it's a lie. He will never stop seeing himself and Cas, unrecognizably bent under the weight of their future, and he knows when he meets his brother that will be just another sight he can't unsee. He peers out the window and finds there's just enough light to see by, but no sign of the sun yet. Soft voices draw his eyes down to the windowsill, where he can just see head and shoulders of Cas leaned casually against the cabin. Across from him is Dean— the other Dean, rigid and self-righteous enough to pass for an angel himself if he didn't look so haggard. Dean can't make out much of the muffled conversation, but he gets the gist when Cas makes a tentative motion to settle a bracing hand on his neck. It's the kind of tactile comfort he would have picked up from Dean and Sam, but if Dean's future self recognizes that, he certainly doesn't show it. He mutters something sharp, face cold and controlled when he smoothly pulls out of Cas' reach and walks away. Dean waits for a look back, a slump of the shoulders, some sign that this man he's supposed to become feels remorse, care, anything at all, but it never comes. He disappears into a cabin, leaving Cas to run his hands through his hair with a sigh that's more resignation than real hurt. Dean suddenly finds he has no interest in learning what they said to each other.

When Cas makes his way back inside, the first thing he does is open another bottle and down a few generous gulps. When he straightens and finally looks at Dean again, the funhouse mirror of a smile is back in place.

"Well, ready to go save the world?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know everyone and their mother has written about Castiel and Dean in the endverse, but I couldn't resist adding my two cents of angst to the pot. It's just a bit of a horrifying concept to see someone you love become so unrecognizably dissociated from their own life, and some of the unseen moments surrounding that episode have haunted my head ever since I watched it.  
> I do have two more chapters more or less completed, and at least a vague concept for the resolution for '09 Dean and Castiel, so I hope you'll stick around to read the rest.
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> -Bee


	2. But Still My Heart Is Heavy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean is back from 2014, but knowing the future is as haunting as knowing the past.

For once, Dean doesn't dream of Hell. In the nights following his trip to Camp Chitaqua, all he sees is the world falling apart around him. Sam grins at him with bloody teeth, eyes flashing red to the splintering _crunch_ of bone. Dean unloads bullets into his friends one by one, and always there are glassy blue eyes following him. He plants one more bullet right between them. He doesn't even care when Castiel drops.

"Cas—" Dean jerks awake in a lumpy bed and barely cuts himself off from calling out a second time. He's sweating; he wipes an arm across his forehead and peels the sheets back to free his legs. Sam is still sprawled across the other bed, snoring lightly. The room is unnervingly red under the light of the motel sign, but it's clean at least. The window is unbroken, furniture all in place. They're nowhere near Camp Chitaqua. Dean swings his feet to the floor and tugs on some pants, and Sam stirs and blinks awake. He must be well past exhaustion, because he doesn't sit up, just mumbles an incoherent question. "Just getting some air." Dean keeps his voice low and pats somewhere around Sam's feet on the way to the door. "Get some more sleep, Sammy." The only answer he gets is a vague hum and then even breathing. Height aside, Sam still looks like the little brother who wouldn't sleep unless Dean tucked him in and lay down next to him. He needed Dean next to him, and now Dean's seen what they're both like without the other. He stops to watch the blankets rise and fall a few times before slipping outside and letting the door click shut behind him.

With the neon buzzing overhead and crickets singing across the parking lot, it's easier to breath, if only a little. Five years in the future, the air is filled with such oppressive silence that it's a tangible weight on Dean's eardrums. 2014 presses insistently, dragging like roadkill until Dean morbidly can't help but to look at it. He swears softly and rubs at his eyes until he sees stars instead of his own face, begging him to say yes to Michael. Like the idiot they both knew him to be, he said no, again. It's no wonder he becomes such a hateful person— he's halfway there already, risking his brother, Cas, and the whole world on a long-shot bid to save himself from being an angel puppet.

In the dark his phone jingle is piercing enough to make him jump and glance back at the door, half-expecting Sam to wake up to come find him. It's just him, though, and now Cas according to caller ID.

"Hey, Cas."

"Dean, are you alright? You were praying."

"No, I wasn't." He takes a moment to think back, just in case, but he definitely hadn't prayed.

"You're okay then?" Cas' irritation is audible through the phone, and Dean huffs a laugh before he can help himself.

"Yeah, man, I'm fine. Listen, Cas—" He swallows, tongue suddenly too thick in his mouth. There is a lot he wants to say. There is a lot he doesn't want to say, but probably should anyway, starting with _I'm sorry_. Dean's clearly not apologizing for anything in 2014, so may as well get it out of the way now. But the razorblade grin and dilated gaze, the crack of Cas' neck when his head lolled and the sour smell of sweat and booze are still fresh, and _sorry_ doesn't even cover it. _Run while you can_ seems the better alternative, especially when he closes his eyes and behind his lids flashes Cas' knowing stare, minutes before Dean sent him to his death. He knew, and he died because Dean told him to, and it wasn't worth it. Nothing could be worth it.

"Dean?" Cas' voice is so quiet on the other end of the line that Dean doesn't understand at first. "Worth what?" He hadn't meant to say it out loud.

He has to wet his lips to unstick them enough to speak again. "Cas, whatever happens, don't let me—" _Don't let me become that man, even if I already see him every day in the mirror._ "— Just, keep me in the loop on the God search, okay?"

The buzzing is worse than a clock ticking the seconds by. Cas must see through him, must hear the quiver rattling in his voice, but finally all he says is "Of course, Dean."

Dean doesn't say goodbye or wait for the line to go dead. He knows he prayed in his sleep; it's hard enough not to do it when he's awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was short, just a bit of a bridge between events, but the next chapter will be longer again.
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> -Bee


End file.
